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From: People Daily Online
China's medicine market is expected to triple from the current 7 billion US dollars to 24 billion to be the world's fifth largest by 2010, said the US-based Boston Consulting Group.
Monday's China Daily quoted the international strategy and general management consulting firm as saying that China now has the world's seventh-largest pharmaceutical market, following the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain and Italy.
The company's latest forecast on line showed that Chinese medicine sector will earn about 14 billion US dollars by 2005, still in the seventh place, but it will outshine Britain and Italyto take the fifth by 2010.
China's remarkable economic growth and the membership of the World Trade Organization (WTO) are two major factors to boost its medicine sector, according to the company's analysis.
A number of multinational pharmaceutical giants are attaching more and more importance to the Chinese market.
The Swiss-based health care company Novartis AG said it plans to increase its investment in China from the current level of over100 million US dollars and aims to become the third biggest pharmaceutical company in China's hospital market.
The company is estimated to have an annual sales growth of 15 to 20 percent in China in the next five years, said James Liu, president of the Beijing Novartis Pharmaceutical Co Ltd.
Novartis had a total sales volume worth of 833 million yuan (101 million US dollars) in China in the first nine months of this year, a year-on-year rise of 7.8 percent.
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